One of the missions of the 82nd Airborne Division – the “All-Americans” – in the Battle of Normandy was securing crossings over the Merderet River on the Cotentin Peninsula. The Merderet had to be secured to both protect the flank for the beachhead at Utah Beach, plus open up the path to Cherbourg at the peninsula’s north tip. Cherbourg was a key target because its port was vital for keeping the growing Allied army in Normandy supplied.

On June 9, 1944 along the Merderet, two 82nd Airborne soldiers met the challenge of separate Nazi counter attacks single handedly and placed their names among our nation’s greatest heroes.

"[I]f we fail, then the whole world,…all that we have known and cared for…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that…men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'” — Winston S. Churchill, June 18, 1940